Pro-criminal Values Of Adolescent Drug-addicts Cover Image

Prokriminalne vrednosti adolescentnih narkomana
Pro-criminal Values Of Adolescent Drug-addicts

Author(s): Bojana Dimitrijević
Subject(s): Psychology
Published by: Универзитет у Нишу
Keywords: pro-criminal values; hyper individualism; addict-style behaviour; adolescents

Summary/Abstract: The dilemma that started this research was whether we could differentiate drug using adolescents from drug-free ones from the aspect of their system of values, called pro-criminal values. The need for examining the pro-criminal values of young people in our research has its origins in daily clinical work with the adolescent popu- lation. The specific nature of their system of values, often insufficiently differentiated and not appropriately understandable in the clinical research of the personality, has been presented as a possible way for differentiating the drug using from the drug free adolescent population. The research concentrates on adolescents between the age of 17 and 27, which was taken as a possible frame of adolescent psychological wander- ing and exploration. Not going further into the causality and reaching the answer to the question of weather pro-criminal values condition addict-style behavior or are formed through addict-style behavior, the goal of this research was to determine the difference of the levels of pro-criminal values of the basic group, one made of adolescent drug-users, and the control group, made of adolescents not using drugs. Demographic characteristic were compared, along with some of the specific details of the subjects' personal history, which could also shed light on some of the differentiation points. We have established that there was no significant difference between the pro- criminal values of the drug using and drug free population in our research, meaning that the modality and intensity of the pro-criminal values is not something that makes a predominant differentiation between the two groups. The significant differences in relations with their parents, tendencies toward the abuse of cigarettes, and the existence of mental issues, are only a few of the fac- tors we can consider to be elements rekated to addict-style behavior. From the results of this research, we can say that the average member of the examined drug using population is a hyper individualist, according to the measures of pro-criminal dimen- sions, and that this trait gets more accentuated along with the years of drug use.

  • Issue Year: 2009
  • Issue No: 04
  • Page Range: 1577-1601
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: Serbian